White Blank Page
by SarahCat1717
Summary: Sherlock started to write again, but without touching the page. He wrote out every word with his pen hovering a hair's breath above the paper. His hand shaped the words in the air "I'll work as fast as I can, John. Your friend, always, Sherlock". Post-Reichenbach. Silent letters home to John chronicle Sherlock's time away and his return. Chapter 5 is up!
1. Chapter 1

It was four months after Sherlock faked his suicide off the roof of Saint Bart's. Four months since he laid on the pavement with blood from the donor bank pooled under his head as he stared ahead blankly with unblinking eyes as John fell to his knees and turned grayer than the London sky on a rainy day.

Sherlock had his first big breakthrough in the pursuit of Moriarty's crime network. He infiltrated a close knit group, mostly all related to one another, who frequently did the dirty work for a lieutenant about two tiers down from the top of the pyramid. It was genius really. Sherlock set up a scenario in which he gained their trust by saving the life of a beloved niece of the patriarch of the family. He collected useful though fairly low level information for weeks. Then his opportunity came when he was trusted to run an errand that involved making the cash drop for payment to a contract killer. The assassin never knew what hit him. Sherlock extracted names and contacts from the man over fifty-six sleepless hours of intense coercion and interrogation in a damp basement. The man's email access and laptop yielded even more. Sherlock walked away with the money that he was originally supposed to deliver and drove straight through to Paris. He rewarded himself with a stay in a fine hotel where he holed up with the best laptop money could buy and hi speed wifi. He tracked down url signatures and mapped out his next steps, pinning pictures, maps, and bits of info to the lovely baroque wallpaper.

He should have been happy. This was significant progress. Sure, it also brought about the realization that the task was going to be a bit more extensive than he originally thought, but he had a plan of how to do it. Sherlock optimistically projected completing the majority of it within six months, eight at the latest. He could be home to London before the first anniversary of his "death" rolled around. But Sherlock paced a track in the posh carpeting and found no solace in the view of the Eifel Tower. It felt empty. Sherlock rambled out the details to himself in the room. There was never a reply. He thought about buying a violin to play to help him think, but he knew it was impractical. No use drawing any attention to himself by waking the neighbors at 4am.

Instead Sherlock took up smoking again. He hung off the balcony and stared at the stars. "Doesn't mean I can't appreciate it" he whispered to the sky as he blew smoke rings at the metal monstrosity whose lights detracted from the starlight. He thought about his violin, back at Baker Street. What would he play if he had it? The answer came immediately to mind. Bach. Why Bach? Because it was John's favorite…

Sherlock gripped the rails with white knuckles and took a steadying breath. He took a few more. By the time he opened his eyes, his cigarette had burned all the way down and extinguished itself against the filter. He went back in and started running over the plan again, double-checking for any cracks. He knew what was really missing. He was talking to a man that wasn't there. A man who was in a different country, who thought he was dead, and was maybe sitting in his [their] living room staring at a dusty violin case and longed to hear Bach.

Sherlock shook his head and ran his fingers though his short auburn curls. He sat down at the desk to scrawl down a few extra notes. He was aware of fatigue seeping in but he didn't want to lose the train of thought before he succumbed to slumber. He filled about two more pages with smaller leads he wanted to remember to chase down in case he had the time or he hit any dead ends. Then turned to the next page of blank hotel stationary paper and started to write out the events of the last few days as if he were telling it as a story. As if he were telling the story to…

Sherlock blinked his bleary eyes and looked at his script on the page. Even without the cliche greeting line at the top, he recognized his writing for what it was. He was writing a letter. He took another sip of strong french coffee, long since cold, and wiped his the back of his hand against his lips. Sherlock then took what he had been writing out to the balcony and set it on fire with his lighter.

He couldn't take any chances like that. The stakes were to high.

But it had felt good. When he was writing he had been picturing John's face lighting up about the clever parts and lowering his brows when Sherlock took too many risks.

Sherlock sat back down at the desk. He grabbed a few nondescript blank pages from the hotel-furnished printer. He started to write again, but without touching the page. He wrote out every word with his pen hovering a hair's breath above the paper. When he came to the bottom of the page he flipped to the next, and the next. His tale filled eight clean, blank pages by the time he was through. By then his head weighed heavy in his left hand and every blink took longer. His hand was hanging over where the parting valediction should go. There are a chastising voice somewhere at the back of Sherlock's brain telling him that it didn't matter what he put. John wasn't actually going to read it anyway.

But it did matter to Sherlock. In the end it wasn't eloquent, but it was the truth.

His hand shaped the words in the air "I'll work as fast as I can, John. Your friend, always, Sherlock".

When Sherlock awoke an alarming ten hours later, he did not clearly recall dragging himself from the desk chair to the bed at some point in the night. But as he rubbed the sleep from his eyes and ran his fingers over the soft beard on his jaw (and thought about growing it further for his next stop in Istanbul) Sherlock saw the blank pages on the desk and recalled with prefect clarity every word that he wrote as if it were there in black ink. He rose quickly and snatched them up. He gave no thought to his disheveled appearance. He strode down to the concierge desk and obtained an envelope with no hotel return address on it as well as ample postage. He politely asked the young man to write an address out on the envelope for him and even resorted to flirting to distract him from asking why Sherlock couldn't address it himself. Sherlock folded the pages slowly. He rubbed his fingers over the edges where they would be held by their recipient. That voice in his head again faintly hissed "sentiment", but Sherlock ignored it. He ripped the strip off the self-sealing envelope like ripping a plaster off a wound, closed it, and dropped it in the nearest mailbox.

Author's note:  
I should be working on the next chapter of the crossover I have been pecking out since late summer. I should be working on my book. But there were just so many feels from the trailer released today and this fic wouldn't wait any longer. I do plan to churn out the installments on this one quickly. Thanks for reading. Reviews make me feel lovely, if you are so moved.


	2. Chapter 2

A few weeks after he sent the first "letter" to John, Sherlock killed a man. It was not an immediate "kill or be killed" situation. It wasn't a shoot out or a brawl. Sherlock had subdued him and cuffed him to a pipe. But the man had recognized Sherlock and, before Sherlock had turned the tables on him, he boasted about how well he would be rewarded for the information. He was a bounty hunter of sorts. He was sent to find who was messing with the supply flow of human cargo between Indonesia and Western Europe. Too many shipments had been tipped off to the authorities. Several key players were taken out of the game. Finding out that the meddler in question was the assumed-dead Sherlock Holmes was a jackpot.

Sherlock retrieved gun that had skittered across the cement floor of the parking garage. He crossed the space between them with resolve, even as the man's taunts of "You're a detective, not a killer" quickly changed to "Please! No!" as Sherlock neared. Sherlock dispatched him with one shot. Logically, it was the only answer that made sense. He left him there. Sherlock walked along the river that ran through the city. He dropped the gun and his gloves in different locations.

He made his way back to the rent-by-the-week flat that was his base of operations. He walked in, hung up his leather jacket and grey scarf, and proceded to enter the bathroom and promptly vomit in the toilet. His stomach was mostly empty to begin with, so it didn't take long.

Sherlock grabbed a bottle of water and sat down at his laptop. He ran over his notes and started booking a flight to the next city on his agenda. As the flight info was processing, Sherlock found that he had picked up a pen with his right hand. He was tapping it rapidly on the table top. He focused on the pen and slowed the rhythm. His breathing slowed as well. The tapping took on the beat of Bach's Violin Sonata No.1.

He looked around his cluttered workspace. Finding not one blank piece of paper left, he turned to the bookshelf. Other temporary inhabitants had left their unwanted paperbacks. Sherlock grabbed a cheap romance novel and tore out an extraneous print-free page from the back of the book. He sat down and picked up the pen. The tip hovered above the yellow-rimmed page, gently trembling. Finally he started to write in ghost letters.

"He wasn't a very nice man, John. You would understand. I'll do whatever needs to be done to keep you safe."

Sherlock picked up an envelope at the airport and dropped it in the post minutes before his flight took off.

The next time Sherlock had to take a life, he didn't feel the need to write home about it.

Some time and a few cities later, Sherlock was on a necessary but very boring stakeout. He sat at a cafe by the window and ordered a cup of tea. When it arrived, Sherlock was distracted by the scent. Hundred of miles away from Baker Street, somehow he was served a cup of the same brand and flavor of tea that John always brought home from the shops. Although John Watson was a practical and frugal man, it was a good tea. Sherlock cupped it in both hands and breathed it in. He closed his eyes and was transported back to his kitchen table, bent over his microscope, where cups of tea would appear at his elbow like magic, often accompanied by a biscuit and a pointed clearing of a throat that ordered him to consume something.

Sherlock was so lost in his revelry he almost missed the woman he was waiting for as she slipped out the back exit and skirted across the alley. He did get the plate number on her rusty volkeswagon and noticed clear signs that it had recently been in the country side, most likely someplace with both sheep and ducks judging by the clump of mud that had dropped from her wheel well as she hit the curb as she sped away. After retrieving said mud, Sherlock stole back into the cafe. He took one last sip and ripped the tag from the tea bag. He also tore a page from the order book that the waitress had dropped from her apron.

That night he huddled in the cold, curled in the front seat of his "borrowed" SUV. He was parked in the brush down the lane from the farm house. The sheep and ducks were sleeping, but there was a boisterous party going on inside. One of the cars out front was a rusty volkeswagon. When the party died down and most guests were gone, he would sneak in and hit the safe. In it was a flash drive that Sherlock needed.

Sherlock took out the slip of thin paper and the tea tag that he had shoved hastily into his back pocket. He found a pen in the glove compartment. He rubbed his hands together to improve the circulation in his frigid fingers. By the light of the moon, he looked at the small scrap of paper.

"I don't know if I ever said thank you when you made me tea. I will say thank you next time. I won't always remember to, mind you, but I'll always will appreciate it. You make very good tea, John."

Sherlock lifted the tea tag to his nose and sniffed deeply. For just a moment his eyes stung a bit. It must have been from the cold. Very carefully, as if it were a prized four leaf clover that a child pressed in the pages of a dictionary, Sherlock folded the note around the tea tag. He placed it in the breast pocket if his shirt. Later, after he stepped over about half a dozen passed out party-goers on his way to the safe in the study, Sherlock snatched one envelope from the desk.

There were more capers along the way that Sherlock felt moved to send along word to John about. There was the escape in Scotland that actually involved Sherlock using the fencing skills he learned in his youth. There was the boat chase through the canals in Venice. John would have liked that one, even though he is not fond of boats. And there was the disguise he donned in Marakesh that would have made John laugh.

But there were also those lonely, feverish nights in Belarus where Sherlock battled the flu but had to keep moving to different locations to evade suspicion.

"John, you're a doctor, is there any evidence to support that saying about 'feed a cold and starve a fever?' God, I must be feverish to write something so stupid. I miss my bed John. I miss the fireplace at Baker Street. You made me soup once, when I was sick. It was terrible. You canceled your date to stay home and make me terrible soup. Why?"

And then he was caught. It was a stupid miscalculation on his part. He though himself to be so clever. He found his was into the smuggler's warehouse so easily, posing as a lorry driver. But they were waiting for him. Their leader was smarter than Sherlock had given him credit for. They didn't know who he was and never guessed he was working alone. They took turns trying to get him to talk, assuming he was working for some rival.

He was tossed into the storage container after one especially brutal session. Sherlock could smell the Chinese take away wafting from where his captors ate on the hood of a car. His mouth watered and his stomach growled despite the cracked ribs that surrounded them. He tried to organize his thoughts and gather his strength for when they opened the door again. Under his bare toe, he felt a familiar shape. He picked up the dirty yellow pencil with the broken tip. Two of Sherlock's fingers on his right hand were broken, so his grip was very loose. But it felt like holding onto a lifeline. He held it above the paper tag one one of the old wooden crates.

"I know a great Chinese place not far from here. You can always tell by the bottom 2/3's of the door handle." Sherlock chuckled dryly at his own joke before turning his implement back to the paper. "I'm hungry, John. Let's have dinner."

He carefully ripped the packing slip off the contained, folded it up, and stuck it in his one remaining shoe. They had only needed the one foot bared to attach the electrodes. He then snapped the pencil in half and hid it in the palm of his left hand, which only had one broken finger. That night he escaped, and one of his captors lost an eye.

Sherlock drove for about two hours and broke into someone's empty vacation home. He cleaned himself up as best he could, but he knew infection was already setting into several wound sites. He ate a can of fruit and barely held it down. He switched cars and drove over the border and straight through to Amsterdam, only stopping once. He needed to mail something.

He showed up at the door of a posh home. He rang the buzzer and leaned heavily on the door frame.

A woman's voice said through the speaker "I'm sorry but Mistress Kate is not taking any appointments today."

"I'm not here to see Mistress Kate. I'm here to see The Woman." He coughed and everything hurt. "I'm cashing in that favor you owe me"

The door buzzed, the lock clicked open. Sherlock turned the handle on the door and was unconscious before he hit the floor.


	3. Chapter 3

Sherlock awoke curled on his side in a warm, comfortable bed fitted with Egyptian cotton sheets and a down duvet. His wounds were dressed with clean white bandages, his fingers were splinted, and here and there were professional stitches. He had a vague recollection of being up and around in this room before, but under some sort of a haze. He checked his internal cognitive workings and found them to be devoid of any residual hum of narcotics.

"Fever then" he said aloud.

"Yes, you gave us quite the scare" said a cool feminine voice from behind him.

Sherlock rolled to his other side to face his hostess. Irene Adler sat in a deep blue satin armchair by the fireplace.

"How bad was it?" he asked, skipping the pretense of any social niceties.

"You had broken ribs, fingers, and a fractured wrist. One ruptured ear drum. Burns on your one foot and on you chest, which became infection sites. Infection also set into the lashes on your back. Bruised kidneys as well. Your fever ran high for two days during which time you were delirious and sometimes destructive. The fever broke last evening and you have slept ever since. You are still on three different antibiotics because whatever filthy environment you were in left you with an aggressively drug-resistant strain of infection."

The woman delivered the news clinically, devoid of emotion.

"Tea?" she asked more solicitously, now that the nasty bit of health-related reporting was over.

"Yes, thank you" replied Sherlock. He rose carefully from the bed, trying not to gasp or groan when he felt the cracked ribs shift. He was grateful for the pajama trousers someone had dressed him in. He made his way to the en suite where he did what he could to sort himself out. He found a dressing gown on the back of the door. It matched his pajama bottoms. Of course it did.

Sherlock joined Miss Adler by the fire. She handed him his tea. He struggled to hold the thin porcelain handle in his splinted grip. But the tea was genuinely good and eased his dry throat.

"You knew I was alive, of course" said Sherlock after a few minutes.

"Not for certain. I wondered if you were. I heard things. Someone taking apart Jim's little empire. Made me wonder more. But…" she trailed off.

"But?" Sherlock asked.

"I was thrown by Dr. Watson's fantastic acting skills. In the papers, the pictures they printed, he seemed genuinely distraught. I always assumed that, if you were alive, he would know. But he doesn't, does he?"

"It was an unfortunate necessity for his own protection. Jim saw to that." He took another sip of tea and saw Irene's expectant expression.

"I don't want to talk about it" he said flatly.

"Oh come now, Sherlock. I know how you like to show off! Don't play coy." she teased.

"I'm not playing at anything." he bit out, dropping the cup into the saucer more forcefully than he had intended to. She averted her eyes to the fire. Sherlock narrowed his eyes at her.

"How did you know John doesn't know?" he asked quickly.

Sherlock noticed the tenuous leap his heart made in his chest at the simple act of being able to saw John's name aloud after all these months without him. Irene met his gaze with a smirk.

He continued to press on "You told me originally you assumed that he knew and that he was just a better actor than you had expected him to be but just now, when you asked, you were confident. You knew the answer before I said it. How?"

"As I said earlier, you were delirious and destructive. You ransacked the room looking for paper when you first awoke. Looked everywhere besides the desk before finally flipping that over and having the stationary tumble out. You'e handwriting is atrocious, Sherlock, but clear enough to make out one name over and over again. And let me tell you, for someone who once lectured me extensively about the pitfalls of sentiment, you did not hold back much from your writings to Dr. Watson."

Irene thoroughly enjoyed the sight of the blush rising from the collar of Sherlock's dressing gown that bloomed further into his cheeks with every passing second.

"Where are they now, these alleged writings you speak of? Or are you planning on holding onto them for future use as, what was it you called it once? Insurance?" Sherlock asked through tight lips. He was still too tired and too sore to play this game, but he would do what he must.

Irene's face softened in a way they Sherlock had not seen happen before.

"Dear boy, I am not the woman you once knew. Yes, I still collect secrets now and again, but I don't use them as currency as freely as I used to. Assisting you through this recovery, Sherlock, will clean our ledger. I have no interest in muddying the waters between us again. Besides, I never had anything against Dr. Watson."

Maybe it was the residual infection affecting his judgement, but Sherlock found himself believing Irene. They sat in silence for a few moments. Irene finished her tea. She rose and paused by Sherlock's shoulder. She placed on hand on that shoulder, uncharacteristically tentative for a woman who wielded a whip with such precision and confidence.

"If you need anything, just ring. Your papers are in the desk." she told him, then left him to it.

Sherlock looked over at the desk with apprehension. It was silly. He knew that. Why be afraid of reading his own words?

He walked over to the desk and eased into the chair. Just as Irene had said, it was barely legible. But everywhere was the unmistakable 4-letter name. And there in the margin was "I remember what you smell like" and "never felt your hair". On the next page it was a bit more coherent. There was a broken but very detailed paragraph about the cut on John's knuckle when he had punched the chief superintendant when Lestrade came to arrest Sherlock. Sherlock wrote about how it felt under his fingertips as they grasped hands and ran to make their getaway. Shoved in between two other lines of print, as if it were a visual representation of a fleeting thought, Sherlock had wrote "had there been time I would have liked to taste that cut. Taste the blood you shed."

The next page the lines all swirled about, one thought running into the next.

"John. John. John. Colleague. Friend. Friend? Proving a point. You. You don't need it. I need. I need. Conductor of Light. Blogger. A fool to not listen to my doctor. My. Mine. Yours. Yours. Your hands are lovely. Don't give me that look, they are. Scalpels. Guns. Sutures. These stitches itch. Yours are better. Last time you stitched me you held my hand. Fits. Gloves. Lost my gloves. Lost my blogger. Cold John. Stoke the fire. Perhaps Mrs. Hudson will send up some cakes later. Feed you up, is that what they do? Tired. Don't go. Stay. Stay. Stay. You stayed. Stay. Here. With me. Room upstairs, if you'll be needing it. Not my date. Not your date, but yours. Yours. Mine. Stay. Come here. Idiot. Yes you do. So alone. I owe you so much. Heard you. One more miracle. Trying John. I'm trying. So alone. I was more alone. I owe you so much. For you, John. One more miracle, for you. Not good? Bit not good. You'll be cross. Be cross. Hit me. Hit me again. Taste your fist. Somebody must love you. Avoided the nose. Somebody must love you. Somebody must love you. John. John. John. Somebody must. I'm trying John. The heart out of me. Burned. Mine. Yours. Always yours. I'm trying John. Baker Street. Tea. Bach. John. John. John…"

Sherlock ran his fingers over the flood of words that went on and on. His fever had broken open the strict dam that held back all those words and sticky, dangerous sentiments. And there they were. Not mocking. Not accusing. But there they were. He could burn the pages. That's what he did. But even burning the pages couldn't take the words back. The page was ash but the words would never be deleted.

Sherlock sat back down at the desk. He found a blank notecard of fine cream card stock in one of the drawers. The drawer was broken. Probably his own doing. He fumbled with the long silver pen. After so many of these letters, the writing that floated above the page was second nature to him. Even though it didn't matter. Even though it wouldn't be seen, Sherlock wrote it out slowly and carefully.

"Dear John,  
I miss you.  
Yours,  
Sherlock" 


	4. Chapter 4

Sherlock's respite at Irene and Kate's domicile/place of business in Amsterdam set his progress back significantly. Several of the leads that he had dried up completely as he languished, nursing broken bones and a vicious infection.

He hated it. It was almost like starting from scratch all over again. When he was finally able to leave and get on with it, he found that the criminal element that was his prey was getting more wary and more careful. Sherlock could still find and exploit the weak links of course, but it was a more time-comsuming process. The targets knew they were being hunted, they just didn't know by what.

Sherlock worked nonstop and pushed the limitations of his body and mind as far as they could go. He almost turned to cocaine on more than one occassion. It would be so easy and it would keep him going more hours.

On those days that he was most tempted he called up John's blog. He read the old case notes. At one remote Russian internet cafe where you pay through the teeth for a half hour of access, Sherlock nursed a horrible coffee and re-read the account of their first meeting over and over again.

Sherlock grabbed a napkin and asked the waitress for a pen. She tried it on her order book and found it to not be working. He indicated that it didn't matter and she placed it in his upturned palm, confused by the attractive man with curls pertruding from under his hat and sharp eyes behind black-rimmed glasses.

He twirled the pen (noted inwardly that his fingers were still stiff where they had been broken) as he looked at the benign picture of John in the corner of his blog. It captured nothing of all that he was. Sherlock squeezed his eyes shut. They burned with exhaustion.

"Dear John,  
Today is one year since Bart's.  
It's taking longer than I expected. I'm so sorry. I'm not sorry for saving you, I'll never be sorry for that. But I'm sorry for failing so far. John, I want to come home. Yours,  
Sherlock"

Not long after that, things picked up again. Sherlock chased down a small lead that ended up acting like the little string on a seam that held together a large syndicate. The network was in dissaray and Sherlock picked them off one by one, like gleaning the weak from a herd. Police stations found criminals locked in cars on their front door stoops, bound and gagged with the evidence in the boot of the car. Some would-be criminal masterminds found their best-kept secrets in the hands of their enemies. And others just disappeared.

And then he moved on to the next.

Sherlock almost passed out ont he street in New Dehli. Clutching to a street sign for support, he realized with mild surprise that he had not eaten in about three days. He stumbled to the nearest food cart and bought 2 samosas. His mouth watered as he prepared for the first bite, the grease coating his lips with warmth. The first was gone in a heart beat. He sat and ate the second more slowly. He could hear John's voice in his head calling him an idiot. Sherlock smiled. It was the first time he smiled in weeks.

Sherlock took a pencil stub from his pocket and spread out the grease-stained wrapper on his thigh.

"Yes doctor, I am eating, see?  
I know, I won't let it get that bad again.  
Promise. Do you know why I steal the food off your plate so often? Because you let me. And because it makes you make that face. You look annoyed and pleased all at once. I miss your face."

Sherlock had to look away from the paper. For a moment, in his mind, he had been back in London. But here it is hot and loud and always crowded. He wiped his face with the heal of his hand and noticed a child standing by watching. There was a moment of panic in his mind, so used to being hypervigilent anymore. But a quick swipe of eyes over the little boy assured him that the child was just another street urchin, not an errand boy for his local target. The boy sheepishly looked from the paper to Sherlock. Sherlock chuckled darkly. He must look like a crazy westerner who writes invisible notes to himself on food wrappers.

Sherlock looked at the pencil in his hand. He took a crinkled bill from his pocket, wrapped it around the pencil, and handed it to be boy. His thin little face lit up, exposing white teeth with a few open spaces. The boy ran off, tough bare feet slapping the ground, clutching his reward. Sherlock folded up the wrapper and put it in his pocket. Back to work.

Sherlock had to remain in India longer than he had hoped. But anywhere that wasn't London was equally detestable. When he finally wrapped up the closure of a complicated money laundering hub that was based in an otherwise inocuous phone sales call center, he took the chance on getting a proper hotel room to regroup and spread out the files he obtained from the call center. He was pleased with what he took from there. The info was extensive. There was a little man tucked away in a back office who kept very few electronic record trails and did a very good job of making sure that all the money that was supposed to go to Moriarty, or that went out to pay his fleet of assassins, was reliable and invisible. The man knew he ins and outs of the numbers but only had figured out the dangerous nature of his employer once it was far too late to get out. The man of numbers had been left floundering when Moriarty died, because then everyone wanted a peice. In the midst of Sherlock taking down those around him, he helped smuggle out the man and his family to a safe location, in exchange for all the files.

Sherlock was even more encouraged when he saw the names of many of those that he had already dispatched among the records. It proved to him just how detailed and accurate the information was. When it was all said and done, the "Done" pile of files was considerably larger than the stack of those he still needed to take down. He put his hand on the small stack of papers that indicated the job that he had left to do and his heart leapt.

"Not too much longer now, John." he said to an empty room.

Sherlock maped out his next plans. As he went oabout his usual technique of pinnng up the info on the wall, Sherlock caught site of himself in the mirror. His breath caught in his throat. He knew he looked like a shell of his former self. He had dark circles under his red-rimmed eyes, his cheeks were sallow, and his hair was a mess of two diferent shades. Grimmacing, but forcing himself to do so, Sherlock lifted the hem of his shirt. His chest, harder sinew and muscle than had been there before, was littered with scars. The presence of two many visible lines of ribs detracted from the muscular improvements.

"John won't approve" he thought.

Then, outloud to himself, "Well, we can't have that."

Sherlock ordered food, calorie packed food, and lots of ice water. Even in the hotel room, the lone AC unit was not enough to fully combat the heat. He ate as much as he could handle without being sick, resolved to finish the servings that were left later. He had the hotel also send up a good pair of scissors. Sherlock carefully cut the lighter tips off his shaggy head of hair. It was left shorter than he would like, but all his own shade. Then he submerged himself in a warm bath. Hot water would have felt more cleansing, but it was just not the weather for it. He scrubbed and scrubbed until he was pink, then emptied the tub and refilled it again. Sherlock allowed himself some time to manage his mind palace. It was woefully messy and chaotic as of late.

Sherlock finished up with his internal housekeeping but remained in the bath water. He sipped ice water. Sherlock removed one large ice cube and allowed it to float in the bath, batting it about until it was gone. He took up another piece of ice in his palm. Sherlock let his eyes slip closed. Immediately, as if it had been waiting there for his just beyond his eyelids, there was an image of John. He was reclined and bare and looking at Sherlock like he was his. A small noise that sounded like a cross between a desperate question and a prayer of praise escaped from the back of Sherlock's throat and echoed against the tile walls. He opened his eyes, as if embarrassed, but then allowed himself the pleasure of closing them again, of seeing John again.

This dream John shifted his expression just the slightest bit in a way that silently asked "What would you like to do?"

In his waking dream, Sherlock crept up John's body, hands hovering just above his skin, just as his pen tip did while writing the letters. Sherlock ached to touch him, but didn't have the first-hand experience to fill in the sense of it. He could conjure up a facsimile, a composite of lesser experiences, but Sherlock would not settle for that. But he did feel the heat radiating from John, just as he had when they sat next to eachother in trains and cabs. He did allow himself to brush his fingers against John's. That contact he did know. That real memory he had filed away like a treasure. So many mornings and evenings of fingers brushing over the exchange of tea and books.

Sherlock recalled another real memory he could layer in. They had been on a stakeout in an abandoned house where not one window was left intact. It was bitter cold. John had tucked his hands under his armpits and cursed the cold under his breath, but his eyes still burned bright when Sherlock told him how he knew to look for their suspect there. When John turned away to look back out the window, the moonlight fell across his neck. The soft hairs stood on end, all gooseflesh and shivers.

So Sherlock rolled another piece of ice in his hand and closed his eyes again. In his dream, he slid the ice cube up John's arm, starting at the pulse at his wrist. He remembered watching how it beat, that night at the pool, how he willed it to keep going. He slid the ice up, imagined how John's arm flexed when he held his gun. He slid it up to John's shoulder where he peiced together the little glimpses of the scar he had spyed over time into a complete image, like putting together a puzzle. Then the ice left a trail up to the hollow of John's throat. It melted in a little pool. He saw John swallow, and that clever pink tongue of his draw across his lips. Those goosebumps rose all over John's neck. Dream John arched towards Sherlock. With just his eyes, those deep blue eyes, he spoke to Sherlock again.

"Tell me what you want, Sherlock"

Sherlock's eyes sprang open. He sloshed water on the floor as he scrambled from the bath. With a towel hastily wrapped around him, he dug for paper and pen. His hair dripped on the paper as he bent over the desk and he panted with the need to write the words.

"I want everything John. Everything of you. And then I want more. And I want you to want to give me everything. I want you to want my everything. It's yours anyway. I've been yours I think since the first day we met. I want you now and I want you forever and a day after that. I want you sleeping and I want you running and I want you when you are reading and when you are pecking at computer keys and when you are yelling at me and when you throw a blanket over me on the sofa at night when you think I am asleep. I want you I want you I want you…"

Sherlock threw the pen across the room. He ran his fingers through his short hair, tugging, the harsh sensation grounding him. He was still panting and wild with need and want. He growled outloud in his stifling hotel room and threw himself backwards onto the bed. He tried to calm his breathing and still his trambling hands. He laid one on his stomach and one over his heart. The thrumming was strong. Sherlock thought of the man who it beat for. He skimmed his hand over his stomach. His hand dipped lower on his body. Sherlock's eyes flew open in surprise. He had supressed base bodily desires for so long. The work was everything to him and physical desire and the baggage that came along with it was just too much trouble. But now it flooded back. It flooded back like a turrent and took on the shape of a short military doctor with blonde and silver hair and a taste for danger.

Author's note: Thanks so much for reading. Please let me know what you think! I appreciate constructive feedback tremendously. PS. We are approaching Baker Street in the near future!


	5. Chapter 5

Hers was the last name on his list. She was a tough one to find. Sherlock tracked her from New York City all the way to New Orleans. If it had not been such a long journey, and had the stakes not been what they were, Sherlock may have enjoyed the prolonged puzzle. Sherlock found her hiding in plain sight, posing at a waitress at an all-night diner in order to make her contacts without drawing attention. He didn't spare any time on finesse. He didn't question her about little missing pieces of her motives and modus operandus. He just followed her into the kitchen when the short-order cook was out back spending time with a neighborhood prostitute. She didn't scream when she pulled a knife on him, nor when Sherlock forced her hand into the pot of simmering gumbo as they struggled. She made it clear that she would not be taken in alive.

Sherlock wiped the blood off his hands with a dish towell. He used a bent knuckle to pop open the door on the till on the way out. The lonely customer in the back booth didn't even lift his head. Sherlock took the few dollars in the register. The "Apparant Murder/Robbery" didn't even make the front pages the following day.

And just like that, without fanfare, it was done.

Sherlock went directly from the diner to the airport and boarded the next set of connecting flights to London. He sat by the window and thrummed his fingers on the table in front of him. He had a single piece of stationary from the steward. And for once, he had no idea what to write.

Sherlock had been operating from the mindset of a running narative to John. His letters sometimes built on one another. He was always leading up to when he could reunite with John, with London, with the Work and the Chase and the cups of tea passed over the clutterd tables of 221B. But although John received his letters, even though they landed in his hands, he never actually read Sherlock's thoughts. He didn't know of the longing and the revelations that only mounted over time and distance instead of cooling.

To John Watson, Sherlock was still dead.

Sherlock crumpled the paper and rested his head against the glass. The vast, dark Atlantic stretched on for miles beneath the plane.

Sherlock exited the plane and had no baggage to pick up. He had nothing but the clothes on his back and a pocketfull of fake ID's, cash, and "borrowed" credit cards. He went out to catch a cab, but instead was greeted by a sleek black car. A lovely brunette stepped out, glanced up from her blackberry, and said "Welcome home Mr. Holmes". He nodded a sneer in return and snuffed out his cigarette before climbing into the awaiting car.

"The elder Mr. Holmes is away at the moment, he sends his regards. He says that he looks forward to 'catching up' with you when he returns from the middle-east. He has made his rooms at the Diogenes Club available to you until you…settle in"

Sherlock wanted with his every atom to go straight to Baker street. But he was road weary and unfocused. In his mind, a shower and a shave seemed like a good excuse to postpone it for an extra hour or so.

Sherlock found Mycroft's office suite at the Diogenes to be more than amply equipped or his needs. He took a shower. His old brand of shampoo was already on the shelf. A selection of suits and shirts hung on the back of the bathroom door. Carefully draped over one of the arm chairs in the office, there was a long Belstaff coat. Upon closer inspection, it was his Belstaff. It must have been given to Mycroft, his next of kin, after he was declared dead (on paper). Sherlock put it on, felt the familiar weight settle around him like a fond memory. He wondered if John had wished the coat was given to him instead.

John.

There would be no easy way to make the re-introduction. John would be angry at the deception no doubt. He would perhaps not accept Sherlock back right off, if at all. He would want answers but then won't like what he hears. But as uncomfortable as it would be, no matter how much hurt and rejection would be thrown in Sherlock's face, it would be John. It would be John living and breathing and being warm and alive and so close that Sherlock could reach out and touch him. Even if John hit him, that would be okay. Better than okay, really. One, it would mean that John felt strongly enough about him, after 2 years time, to still give enough of a damn to get that mad. And two, it would mean John would be touching him. The sting of a broken nose or a blackened eye (or both) would be worth it. It would the the physical evidence of Dr. John Hamish Watson and Sherock Holmes inhabiting the same small corner of the world again.

Sherlock looked out the window at the London Eye in the distance. Was John looking up at the Eye from some other vantage point at the same time? The thought was so invigorating. It sent electric shocks flying up Sherlock's spinal collumn.

He turned his collar up and strode out of the Diogenes.

Sherlock exited the cab several blocks away from Baker Street. He walked with excitement and trepidation. Any corner he turned could result in bumping into John. Sherlock saw the building in the distance. He slowed his speed. He ducked into the alley across the way from the black door emblazened with 221B above the knocker. He paced. He shoved his hands in his pockets out of the habit of seeking out a pack of cigarettes. What he found was a single plain piece of paper, folded over once, sharply and precisely. There were two type-written lines at the top.

"Mrs. Hudson: Practices with a local choral group from 5-7pm. Usually goes out for drinks afterwards, arriving home between 8:30-9:30pm.  
Dr. Watson: Works at the A&E department until 6pm, but often stays after his shift. Arrives homes on average between 7-8pm.  
Take care with them, Sherlock -MH"

Sherlock checked his watch. It was 5:17pm. He couldn't risk popping out of his hiding place. He was too recognizable among his (former) neighbors, who would all be arriving home from work in the coming hour or so. So there he waited. And paced. And wished for a cigarette. And studied every new shadow that turned the corner onto Baker Street.

He rubbed the note from Mycroft between his fingers.

Sherlock looked down at the paper.

He had time for one more letter. Sherlock pick-pocketed a pen from the next businessman that walked by. He tore the page in half allong the fold. He took a deep breath.

He wrote just one question. That's all he had left. He signed his name. Sherlock folded it over once. Using the passing, slow traffic as cover, Sherlock nippd across the street and slipped it note into the mail slot.

He dashed back to his hiding spot and waited again.

John Watson stepped out of a cab in front of 221B Baker Street at 7:02pm. Sherlock saw him give the cabbie a casual smile as he paid her. Sherlock clutched the brick wall of the alleyway to ground himself.

John opened the door with his key and walked in. In his memory, Sherlock could hear the sound of John's shoes mounting the stairs. It was a beat that went "1-2, 1-2-3-4, 1-2, …"

It was one of Sherlock's favorite soundtracks to replay.

Sherlock was in motion across the street before realizing he even made the decision to do so. He appraoched the door. He tried to school his face to something neutral and not too hopeful. Sherlock reached for the doorbell. Berfore his finger could depress the button, the door whipped open in front of him.

"Sherlo…" John had started before the door was fully open, before he laid eyes on his doorstep.

Sherlock's attempt at appearing unaffected failed miserably. He was completely and utterly surprised.

"John, I can explain. No wait, you need to explain. John, how did you know I was here? And why aren't you surprised to see me?" Sherlock sputtered out.

John's face was expectant when he opened the door, not aghast. Not as one would imagine one's friend would look when finding one's friend found their deceased friend standing on the doorstep of their formerly shared flat.

John was wide-eyed, sure, but in a way that denoted amusement.

"I got your note, idiot" he said in reply, holding up the blank folded paper.

Sherlock snatched it out of John's hand. Somewhere in his mind, John's body heat on the page registered. But Sherlock had other questions that pushed past that observation. He flipped the page over and over in his grasp. Definitely blank. Not even telling depressions in the paper.

John was still standing in the doorway. He stepped back and held it open.

"So are you coming in then?" he asked. John Watson turned around and trotted up the stairs.

1-2, 1-2-3-4, 1-2 


	6. Chapter 6

Sherlock stood in the doorway of 221B in utter shock. From upstairs came the sound of the water turning on in the kitchen. John was filling the kettle. Sherlock was drawn upstairs. The same stair creaked like it used to, only a bit louder perhaps. There was a new gash in the wallpaper. There was no lab equipment on the kitchen table but the acid stain was still there and John was making Sherlock tea.

"You're making me tea." he said.

"Obviously" replied John.

Sherlock felt the corner of his own lip quirk up in acknowledgement of John's little dig.

They stood there in the small kitchen together. Sherlock was not bleeding from his face a he had expected to at that point in their reunion. John calmly leaned with his hips against the countertop as he waited for the kettle to boil. They both openly stared at one another. The silence was not overly tense nor was it comfortably familiar yet either.

"Who told you I was alive. Was it Mycroft? No, not Mycroft. He wouldn't take the risk. Was it Molly? Did she let something slip?" Sherlock asked in quick succession.

"Molly Hooper knew?" John countered with a squint and a change of stance.

Finally the first flare of anger crossed John's face. That bit about Molly did genuinely surprise him.

"Yes. It was necessary. She was not on Moriarty's radar as being someone who I trusted to that degree and she had access to certain resources at Bart's that were vital to my plan." Sherlock waved his hand in the air to dismiss this line of questioning. "No, no one told you. You figured it out, how? How John?"

Sherlock had taken two steps closer and crowded into John's space. John's momentary anger over the Molly revelation faded quickly. He took a deep breath and blinked slower than necessary. When he opened them again his eyes briefly lighted over Sherlock's face and lingered fractionally longer on his lips.

The kettle's little orange light switched on as it's power cut off.

John stood up from where he had been leaning.

"Go on in the sitting room, I'll bring it in there and we can talk."

And so John turned his back and set about making two cups of tea.

Sherlock sat down in his chair, his chair still across from John's chair. He stroked the leather and felt a fierce swell of affection for the man in the kitchen. How many people passed John on the street everyday and didn't know that John returned home to his flat every night and sat across from an empty chair. The chair of a friend who had told him "keep your eyes fixed on me" and then jumped. Most others in that position would have tossed out or burned the chair. But John Watson is not most others. John Watson is made of braver burnished metal than most.

John Watson brought Sherlock his tea. Sherlock silently lamented that John placed it on the table next to Sherlock instead of placing it in his hand. Sherlock thought back to the fantasy he had back in India and the brush of fingertips.

"You know it took me a while after…well, after…to get out of the habit of making two cups of tea." started John, pulling Sherlock back to the moment.

"I had been back to seeing Ella, my therapist, and she said it was fine and natural. She told me I shouldn't beat myself up over it when it happened. Didn't quite save those half-dozen or so mugs from getting thrown against the wall, though. I stopped seeing her when I realized the therapy wasn't really helping. But that bit stuck with me. That bit about it being okay for me to do whatever I needed to do, even those little silly things, in order to make it through."

John took a long sip of his tea. He nodded once to himself, as if coming to a decision. John placed his mug down on his end table with a solid clunk. He reached under his chair and pulled out a plain shoe box. He opened it up, hesitated for just a moment, then took out a thick stack of mail.

It was all of Sherlock's letters. Sherlock's eyes grew large and he felt very exposed for a moment before he remembered that they were just envelopes and envelopes of blank pages.

"So when I received this first one," John started again after settling back down into his chair "and I found that I opened it up a few times a day, and that it made its way into my jacket pocket when I went to work, and that it stayed on my bedside table as I went to sleep at night, I tried not to overthink it. I knew, on some level, it was just me doing what I needed to do to make it through my day."

"But how John? How did you…" Sherlock demanded, only to be cut off with a single raised finger from John.

"If it had just been one page I probably would have tossed it. Thought somebody meant to send me something and stuck in a blank page instead. But all those pages. It was a whole story. It was, wasn't it Sherlock?"

Sherlock nodded, his mouth hanging open in a terribly undignified manner. John took another drink of his tea. Sherlock mirrored the action. God it tasted like home. He closed his eyes and held it in his mouth and let his tongue swim in it before he finally swallowed it down. It was like a sacrament, only not based on myths and legend and books from the bronze age. It was a tangible truth of steeped leaves and perfectly measured milk that some things didn't change.

"I never really thought too hard about what the story was about. I never tried to deduce the real origin of the envelope and how it came to come into my hands with some stranger's writing on the envelope. And although I never even really explicitly acknowledged it, even in the quiet of my own thoughts, that I thought it was from you. It made me feel better. That long letter made me feel like I wasn't so alone."

Sherlock thought back to his last day in London. He watched John stand at his gravestone. He heard his words carried on the wind. "I was so alone and I owe you so much."

"And then other days, it gave me something to focus my anger on. Cause I was angry too. I was left behind and out of the loop and then I got these empty pages tossed at me but I'm not a puzzle-solver and I don't get off enigmatic clues like some people do. Some nights I spread them all out on the table, my side of the table, and looked over at your empty side. And I paced and cursed and slapped my hands down onto those blank pages so hard that my palms felt like they were burning. I almost ripped them up, almost burned them. But then I would calm down or just get plain exhausted. And the next day I would fold them back up again in the right order and tuck them back in my pocket."

John traced the edge of his shirt pocket. Sherlock sipped his tea and felt warmed through for the first time in what felt like years. He thought about his letter resting against John's body heat, rising and falling with his breath, the corner of the envelope trembling faintly with each beat of his heart.

John sat up straighter in his chair. He picked the second letter out of the pile and pointed it at Sherlock accusingly. "Then this one arrived, and pretty much all hell broke loose." He tapped the smaller envelope against his own temple.

John rose from his chair and paced. He took the single torn, blank, cheap book page out of the envelope. He stopped and looked at it ruefully and took several agitated breaths through his nose. Sherlock was positively enrapt.

"I may not be a genius but this letter - this note was desperate. And yes, at that point, I did start calling them 'the letters' in my head. I knew it was crazy and I didn't care because it, it just fit. So anyway, this one upset me, Sherlock." John hit the 'k' sound at the end of Sherlock's name like a cuff up the side of the detective's head.

"Why" Sherlock interjected. He was fascinated.

"Because the last one told me an adventure or was showing off or something. It was reaching out and sharing something with me. But this one," John punctuated his speech by shaking the page by one of its yellowed edges. "This one reminded me that you were alone too."

All of the malice drained out of John in one long exhale. He sat back down across from Sherlock. When he spoke again, it was softer.

"This one upset me because I felt like you were somewhere that I couldn't follow and there was no one there to watch your back. And you shouldn't have to be alone. I know you're a genius and all that but this one, this sad little ripped page, made me feel like you were out of your depth and it shook me."

"You were convinced they were from me by then?"

"No. Not really convinced. But when I held them I believed they came from you. I had little to no evidence to support that thought but once you rule out the impossible, or whatever, that thing you always said."

"Say. That thing I say. I'm not past tense, John." Sherlock corrected.

John looked up from the paper and smiled.

"No, you are present tense now. And that's brilliant."

Sherlock ventured a tentative smile back.

"So what did you do? After the second letter?" Sherlock asked after a few moments of silence.

"Well, I talked my way in and out of several mini mental breakdowns. I started incessantly searching the internet for news from the date and location stamps from where the letters came from, almost picked up the phone to call Mycroft a few times even." John paused and then added, quieter, "And I listened to a lot of your CD's"

"What?" Sherlock's head snapped up.

"What what?" asked John.

"You listened to my CD's? Why? You never listened to them when I was in the flat. Why then? And which ones?"

"Umm, I didn't listen to them when you were here because I had live concerts in my sitting room all hours of the day and night. I listened to them after I got that letter because it was kind of a weird way of me trying to be with you. I used to imagine you somewhere maniacally scouring the radio dial for 'something halfway decent, John' like when we had the rental car out in Darthmoor, and that maybe we would be listening to the same thing at the same time. But I guess I mostly just came back around to my favorite the most often because I missed y…your playing."

John finished the last of his tea as Sherlock steepled his fingers against his mouth. John lowered his cup.

"Bach's Violin Sonata No. 1" they both said in unison.


End file.
